My Second Monster Story
by BluebirdSunflower
Summary: following the events of "Monster Hunt", will Link and the other monsters be good parents?
1. Where do vampires come from

Thousands of years ago, Link had been married and had a son. A few months after his son was born, his mate left them to meet other males. Whether it was the lack of a nursing mother or if he had been born early or small, Link never knew the reason why his son had taken sick and died. The heartbreak of losing his child had driven Link out of his tribe, which probably saved him in the long run; he had been frozen in ice, the tribe had long died. In those days, his people did not have names, but now he referred to his son as Finnigan and his mate as "the back-stabbing hag."

Now Link had a second chance to be a father.

It was strange to think how he had ended up marrying Stella; he had seen all the horror movies where vampires bite and drink your blood and turn you into one of them (**A.N. I thought Link might be scared of vampires by the way he reacted to the zombies in the episode "It Came from Level Z"**). But Stella was nice and pretty and musical and liked video-games and kids; in fact Sqweep had been the one to tell Link that Stella liked him after another failed attempt at flirting with Sta'abi. The vampress and the little alien had struck an immediate friendship.

So Link had given the vampress a chance; and fell in love with her; and married her; and now they were expecting their first baby. Only, it was past Stella's due date...long past, and the couple was starting to worry. Luna said she would give Stella an ultra-sound to make sure everything was okay.

It wasn't. The baby was not moving at all, and there was no heartbeat. Luna induced labor to get the baby out of her friend. When it was out, Luna did everything she could to clear its air-passageways and wake it up, but nothing helped. Link held his second son in his arms; the little boy looked like him, with darker, grayer colors and wing-flaps coming from his arms like a bat. And the parents refused to let go of the body for burial until the next day.

* * *

Stella had not told anybody, but during the last two months of her pregnancy she had heard a strange yet familiar voice in her head. She could not remember where she had heard it before, yet she knew it was a voice she could never forget. The voice would tell her to come, and to bring her baby with her. Up until now she had ignored it, thinking her hormones or stress were playing tricks on her mind. But tonight, lying on the raft she slept on in Link's tank and holding her stillborn's body, some instinct told her maybe the voice could bring her son to life. Moving slowly to keep from waking Link, she carried the baby out of Area Fifty-Something.

* * *

The next day, the world shivered in horror as vampires came out of the woodworks, swarming to a space ship which had arisen out the ground in the North Pole. General Monger sent every available monster to investigate and stop any invasion plans. Sneaking onto the ship, Team Monster shuddered when they passed a window and saw the room was full of baby vampires, most of which were contorted into gremlin-looking things. They did not notice the baby that looked like Link, which saw them out the window and managed to find a way out of the room.

Stella had been captured by Strigoi, an alien vampire who had crashed on Earth thousands of years ago. He had been the one to bite Stella and turn her into a vampire, and he was disappointed that she had kept her humanity. Catching the failed vampress in a capsule, he extracted the virus which transformed her, leaving her a pale human with fangs. Strigoi commanded a lackey to take Stella to the babies' room...as a snack for the recently revived infants. Strigoi had been the one to telepathically summon all the vampires on Earth and bring their stillborn babies to life, using electricity a la Frankenstein.

Team Monster managed to knock out Stella's escort. Stella bit her wrist, which managed to give her back some of her powers. In the control room, they found a weapon that would cause an imitation supernova as a means of destroying the ship and any vampires on it. Dr. Cockroach set the weapon just as Stella and Link's son caught up to the monsters. The baby hissed hungrily until his daddy gave him a fish which had been wedged in his scales at breakfast that morning.

As the monsters tried to escape, Strigoi attacked them. Stella beat the vampire back into the ship, and did not come out again before it exploded. Strigoi's death caused all the vampires he had ever bitten to disintegrate, as well as the vampires they had bitten. There seemed to be no surviving vampires except Link's son, Sander.


	2. Snippets

"Dr. Cockroach! From now on make sure your cubs do not land in my sloppy Joes!" General Monger held out his tray, baby Moon sitting in the middle of it covered in beans and gnawing on an old shoe she had found in a garbage can. Luna grinned, embarrassed, and plucked the little cub from the tray. "She's just going through a phase," the werewolf mumbled.

"Phase or not, I will not tolerate-" the general was interrupted by Sander dropping onto his head. The vampire-fishman leaned over to look into Monger's face.

* * *

"He doesn't expect us to believe he's always got an eye on us, does he?" a six-year-old Callie pointed with her thumb at an old poster with General Monger's face reading "I'm always watching." Callie and her friends had noticed this poster many times before on their way to the room where they had school classes.

Monger's voice suddenly came on the intercom as the young monsters and aliens were shaking their heads, "Oh yes I do!" The aging soldier could not resist, and it was a hoot to watch the kids scream and run in various directions.

Sander, Wolfgang and Wiggles ended up in the cafeteria, hiding under a table. Sander poked his finger into Wiggles' side and, using it as a pencil, wrote a message which Wolfgang read silently, "Do you think he knows I was skating in here yesterday?" The day before Sander had used a lunch tray to surf the rail in the cafeteria. He had collided with the cook and spilled pudding all over the floor. Wolfgang looked at his friends and shrugged, equally worried that Monger had seen him tinkering with the dance machine in the general's office to play more modern music.

* * *

Wiggles had found the same UFO that his father and Uncle Link had played with years before. Excitedly he fetched his two best friends. "Let's play Invaders!" the blob begged as Wolfgang skittered over the ship, inspecting it for damage.

"Dudes!" said Sander, equally excited, "We should try to fly it!" Wolfgang repaired the ship, then the boys brought it outside to repaint the hull. When they were ready, the boys took off for the nearby diner. Unfortunately, one of the soldiers from the base was there with his tank.

"ALIENS!" the soldier panicked, climbing into his tank and preparing to fire at the UFO. The boys screamed in fear as a missile headed towards them, but something stopped the weapon. A vampress hovered in the air, clutching onto the missile.

* * *

"STELLA?!" everyone chorused, causing an echo in the control room. The vampire nodded, looking tired but unphased. "The last we saw you..." Luna could not finish.

"I turned into dust just before the ship blew. Most of myself was okay, but the pieces were scattered everywhere. It took me until two days ago to reassemble, and it was exhausting! I rested before I came back. How long has it been?"

"Six years," said Link softly. He had not known how to feel when confronted by the sight of his wife. He had long given her up for dead. Did it really take six years to put pieces of dust...well, there had been a few storms which may have slowed her down. And she could have lost pieces in the explosion. How was Sander going to handle suddenly having a mom?


	3. Stella's back

Sander had always been envious of the other kids; they all had mothers. It was not that Link was a bad parent, but mothers were different and better at certain things (like kissing and cuddling) than fathers. And sure, there were some growing pains as the fish-vampire hybrid adjusted to Stella's new rules, but he was glad to have a mother, his mother.

Stella had nearly broken down crying once she had a moment alone with her family. Link had remained single, and Sander had grown up so much! She loved them both so much it was actually painful. The vampress pulled herself together, however, and laid out some new ground rules for both boys and caught up with what they had been doing in her absence.

"- and so we're all looking at this old poster that says General Monger is always watching, and Callie says 'He doesn't expect us to believe he's always watching us does he' and then Monger's voice comes over the mike and he says 'Oh yes he does' and we all run screaming!" the little vampire chattered excitedly. Stella laughed, tears rolling down her face. "Hey Ma, Aunt Suse says you were a music teacher. Are you gonna be teachin' me music?"

"If you'd like, son," the vampress smiled, loving how the word "son" rolled off her tongue.

Stella taught all the young monsters and aliens, with Sander being one of her most eager, and therefore best, students. She taught them to sing and to play the piano and the guitar. Wiggles preferred the trumpet while Victor loved to bang on the drums. Moon and Callie both learned to play the flute. When the music teacher judged they were ready the kids performed for the whole base, earning much applause and cries for encores.

* * *

"Sander's gonna be a brother!" Candice chanted in a sing-song voice. The kids were all at lunch when the news came that Stella was having her new baby. It had been almost a year since the vampress' return and her first child was not looking forward to sharing her.

Wolfgang and Wiggles both put an arm around their friend. "Relax, San," coaxed the gelatinous boy.

"Yeah," added the werewolf-cockroach hybrid, "being a brother isn't all bad. And you'll be oldest, so you get to boss your little sister around!"

"HEY!" chorused the girls on the other side of the table.

Meanwhile, Stella was instructing Dr. Cockroach and Luna how to revive a baby vampire. Electric pulses, she recalled, had been used to bring Sander to life a la Frankenstein. Moments later Link was holding a healthy baby girl-version of Sander in his arms. Both parents smiled as Luna went to fetch Sander to meet his sister.

The hybrid boy walked with shuffling steps, trying to hide his scowl in the presence of his parents. "Come here, San," murmured Link, kneeling on one knee, "Meet Alexena." Sander did as he was told, and started brightening up a bit as he stared at the tiny creature in his dad's arms. "Would you like to hold her?" Sander barely registered his head nodding as Stella pulled him onto the bed next to her, cautioning him to be careful of his sister's head.

She was so small! Were all babies this small and helpless-looking? Alexena stared at her brother with equally amazed eyes...before she started gurgling and struggling to get out of his grasp. Sander eagerly held her out when Link moved to take her back, but the smaller hybrid leapt out of their reach and started exploring the room, ignoring the two fishmen and the cockroach chasing after her.


	4. Halloween

Smartie loved Halloween. He got to see his family and take his three younger siblings trick-or-treating. Everyone would assume the little monsters were ordinary kids in werewolf costumes, one with added antenae and a smart phone hanging from his belt.

Smartie thought it was amusing that the cubs would always line up, the youngest Candice in front, Wolfgang in the middle, and Moon, the quiet, shy one, in the back. Actually, it kind of fit their personalities. Candi was not a brat but she could be forceful. The little changeling was very much like their father, she even laughed like him. Wolfgang was eager, yet considerate, keeping an eye on his younger sister and trusting his twin to her own judgement. Moon was the quietest kid in Area Fifty-Something, always at the edge of the group, never saying much. When Smartie looked through all the medical databases and matched Moon's traits with symptoms of disabilities, it alarmed him. Luna, however, insisted Moon would be okay, and since she was a medic Smartie trusted her judgement.

* * *

When Wiggles and Bob went trick-or-treating, it was the opposite of the Cockroach family's orderliness. Wiggles was constantly chasing after his father, warning him to behave or he would tell mom. Yet when the two monsters approached a house, Bob would forget his line, leaving Wiggles to collect. After a few hours of barely contained chaos, father and son would sit on the curb and enjoy their spoils.

* * *

Link's newly reunited family went house-to-house together. Link and Stella watched as Sander led his tiny sister Alexena by the hand to each door and call "Trick or treat! Smell my feet!" Most people were amazed at the strange, creative costumes of the little family, giving baby Alex extra candy. Only having her two vampiric fangs, she was too young to gum through most of the candy, "sharing" it with her dad. After trick-or-treating, Link would look after Alex while Stella took Sander flying through the dark skies in an effort to scare people. It often worked.

* * *

Susan, Hunter and the kids often spent Halloween at the Murphy's house. Ty and Callie loved the spooky decorations and the mountains of candy and seeing Gramma and Granpa. Ty would even remember to snag some extra treats for the alien kids who were not allowed to leave the secret base.

When everyone returned home, the grownups would take turns telling scary stories about monsters, ghosts, and strange happenings. Stella, being the oldest, knew the most stories. Luna teasingly called the vampire "the Queen of Halloween."


End file.
